Thus it is when a man goes along lost in thought; if his hands were loose, he would drop them by the way. Collect your thoughts, Lenz!
He made a violent effort, and walked on briskly. The sun was now shining warm and bright, the icicles hanging from the rocks, glittered and dropped; the gay song, "Wandern, wandern," that he had sung so often with his friends, recurred to his mind, but he dismissed it at once; the man who once sung that in gaiety of heart, must have been a very different man then.
The relations whom he went to visit were rejoiced to see him on his arrival, and he recounted the adventure of his hat repeatedly, in order to account for the shabby appearance it gave him, but when he saw that his hat never seemed to have been remarked, he made no further allusion to the subject; and yet precisely where they said nothing they inwardly thought—"He must be sunk low indeed, to wear such a hat!"
In some houses they were civil, in others rude: "How can you expect us to help you? you are connected with so grand a family, such rich connexions through your father-in-law, and an uncle wallowing in wealth: they are the people who ought to assist you!"
Where people wished to be more kind, they said: "Unluckily we stand in need of all our money ourselves—we must build, and we have just bought some land;" or again: "If you had only come to us eight days ago, we had money, but now we have lent it out on mortgage."
Lenz went on his way with a heavy heart, and when he thought of returning home, a voice said within him: "Oh! if I might only never see the Morgenhalde more! To lie down and die in a ditch, or in the wood,—there are plenty of places to die in,—that would be best for me!"
An irresistible impulse, however, urged him onwards. "There is Knuslingen, where Franzl lives with her brother; there is still one person in the world who will rejoice to see me."
No one in the world could, indeed, be more rejoiced than Franzl when she saw Lenz. She was sitting at the window, spinning coarse yarn, but when Lenz came in, she flung the spindle into the air. She carefully dusted the chair twice over, on which she invited Lenz to sit down, and kept lamenting that things did not look tidier; she only now remarked how dull and smoky her room was. She wished to hear all Lenz's news, and yet she never let him open his lips, she was so busy talking herself, and saying:—
"When I first came here I thought the cold would have been my death; for I had been so used to our fine bright sunshine on the Morgenhalde. There is not a single ray of sun there of which we don't get our share. Now, however, I have at last become accustomed to do without it; but Lenz, you look very ill? There is something strange in your face that I never saw there before—that is not natural to you—Oh! when you smile like that, I see your old face again—your kindly face. I have prayed every morning and every evening, since I left you, for you and your family. I hope you got some good from it. I am no longer angry with Annele—not in the least: she was quite right; I am regular old lumber. How are your children? What are they like? What are they called? If I am still alive next spring, I must see them, even if I creep on my hands and feet the whole way." And then Franzl went on to say that she had three hens of her own, and two geese, and a patch of potato land, also her own. "We are poor," said she, crossing her hands on her breast, "but, thank God! we have never yet had occasion to see how other people live; we have always had enough for our own wants, and if it be God's will, I mean to get a goat next spring." She praised her geese highly, but still more her poultry. The hens, who had taken up their winter quarters in a coop near the stove, cackled as if in gratitude, and turning their red combs first to the right and then to the left, looked sideways at the man who was hearing all their good qualities detailed by Franzl. Indeed, the speckled golden Hamburg hen, whose name was Goldammer, stretched out her wings from joy, and flapped them cheerfully.
Lenz could not succeed in getting in a word, and Franzl thought she was consoling him, when she attacked the former Landlady of the "Lion" fiercely, and then branched off to tell how kind her old acquaintance Kathrine had been towards her, and the good she did to all the poor round her. "She gives me food for my hens, and they give me my food in return."